Whenever I saw a spreadsheet, I used to think that my life was heading in the wrong direction. I had associated spreadsheets—and by extension, numbers and analytics—with soul-sucking corporate work.

Whenever I saw a whiteboard, though, I would think that my life was heading in the right direction. I associated whiteboards with creativity and brainstorming. Not only this—but I saw and felt firsthand how helpful whiteboards were for visualizing all of the concepts, relationships, and hunches inside people’s minds.

Dan Roam told me a new story about spreadsheets. In The Back of the Napkin, his book about visual thinking, Dan describes a group of people he notices who are inclined towards drawing—when they see a whiteboard, they say, “Hand me the pen.” He describes these people as “Black pen people,” because they never have a problem putting the first marks on a blank page. (That’s me!)

Later on, Dan introduces a four step process for looking more clearly:

1. Collect everything we can to look at—the more the better (at least at first). 

2. Have a place where we can lay out everything and really look at it all, side by side.

3. Always define a basic coordinate system to give us clear orientation and position.

4. Find ways to cut ruthlessly from everything our eyes bring in—we need to practice visual triage.

And while big spaces like whiteboards are great places to collect everything to look at, so are spreadsheets. Dan writes:

Many times the data we need to look at is just that: numbers, plain and simple. That’s where spreadsheets come in. Although some Black Pen people may be convinced that numbers buried in rows and columns can never be “visual,” spreadsheets are excellent tools for spreading out lots of data on a single sheet, where it can all be looked at and compared in one go.

As simple as that sounds, that’s exactly how I learned to appreciate spreadsheets the same way I appreciate whiteboards. 

While the visceral, unconscious, aversion to spreadsheets still hasn’t quite fully disappeared, I can quickly remind myself that spreadsheets aren’t the enemy, and certainly not a sign that my life is heading in the wrong direction. I’m just as eager to type into the first cell, row, and column as I am to draw on a blank whiteboard, and just as pleased when a disparate set of research, data, or plans start to come together—all thanks to the organizing structure of the spreadsheet.